CheckMag | OnePlus and the 2MP camera curse
OnePlus recently announced a handful of exciting products including the OnePlus Ace 3 Pro, a new smartphone that falls under its affordable flagship series. The Ace 3 Pro mostly packs impressive specs such as a 120Hz LTPO AMOLED display with a peak brightness of 4500 nits; the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, the same chip that the OnePlus 12 comes with (curr. $800 on Amazon); up to 24 GB of RAM, up to 1 TB of storage, and a massive 6100 mAh battery that charges at a whopping 100W!
However, there’s one feature that puts a dent in what could have been the perfect exterior: the 2MP macro camera on the back. This singular feature smears what is essentially a great phone and cheapens it, for lack of a better description. The OnePlus Ace 3 Pro isn’t the only affordable flagship OnePlus has launched with a 2MP sensor. A similar camera sensor can be found on the OnePlus 12R (available on Amazon for $500), the OnePlus 11R released in 2023, and the OnePlus 10T launched in 2022. Unsurprisingly, plenty of outlets call this 2MP sensor ‘useless’ or something along that line, but OnePlus seems not to care. Nevertheless, why does it keep adding it to its phones?
OnePlus seems to simply want to put as many cameras as it can on a phone. However, while more cameras are welcome, it only counts when they are useful such as if it is a telephoto camera. Furthermore, I believe that the camera island design on the OnePlus phones listed above also contributes to this trend. For the past two years, its flagship number series and R-series have adopted a humongous camera island, one I’ve heard some folks say triggers Trypophobia. In a bid to fill these holes in its less-expensive phones such as the OnePlus Ace 3 Pro, OnePlus seems to opt for cheap sensors such as a 2MP macro camera.
Notwithstanding, OnePlus needs to realize that two good cameras are better than three or four unremarkable ones. We’ve seen this on flagship phones such as the Pixel 8 (discounted to $646 on Amazon) and cheaper models such as the Nothing Phone (2a) (curr. discounted to €299 on Amazon.de). And if OnePlus is hell-bent on including a macro camera, it can borrow a leaf out of other phone makers' books, such as Nothing and its Phone (2) whose ultrawide camera can also take macro photos.
In summary, OnePlus needs to put a stop to this tradition, particularly in its affordable flagship series, as it takes the shine off of what could have been outstanding phones.
